The Internet consists of a network of millions of independent computers or servers that are connected throughout the world. These computers are linked to the Internet to allow access to information and other resources available on these computers or Internet servers, as they are known, via HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) based Internet Browsers software similar to that of the popular Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator Internet browsers. Internet service providers or “ISP'S”, such as companies like AOL provide the public and commercial entities access to these networks of computers by providing Internet access to this network through telephone lines and dial up access.
There are fundamentally two functions that the Internet offers once a person is connected thereto namely e-mail access and access to millions of Internet websites.
E-mail provides each user of the Internet a unique e-mail address, e.g. “john@yahoo.com”, that allow these unique users who own e-mail addresses to communicate with each other by using e-mail software. The unique e-mail address is necessary to route e-mail to the correct requester through the Internet. Familiar e-mail applications are software like Microsoft Outlook Express for example, that is loaded onto the user's computer. There are also ways of accessing e-mail from the Internet, such as web page driven e-mail applications offered, for example, by “Yahoo” and “Hotmail”. Typically these online e-mail applications are stored on a remote server and not on the user's computer. Users have access to these web based e-mail applications from any computer that has access to the Internet from any Internet browser software.
Accordingly, e-mail has become a powerful means of connecting one individual to another. Once you have the unique e-mail address of the individual you would like to communicate with, e-mail provides a fast and convenient method of communicating, distributing information, moving documents and files as attachments in an e-mail from one individual's e-mail address to another.
Web browsing is another intrinsic benefit of Internet access, which allows a user of the Internet to connect to Internet websites. Similar to e-mail, websites are also given unique identified descriptors know as a web address, e.g. “www.uspto.org”, also known as a URL (uniform resource locator). These addresses allow users to access information specific to companies and organizations etc. To access these websites, users make use of web browser software similar to the popular Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Browsers. Web browsers allow a user to type in the URL which identifies the owner and location of a website on a particular web server connected to the Internet, and allows the website information to be downloaded from the server and displayed in the web browser viewing window. To locate these websites, you need the exact website address. For example “www.uspto.org” is a specific URL location for the Unites States Patent Office website.
Once you enter the website, the first page (typically called the home page) affords a user the option of connecting to other resources or additional information within the website by clicking on buttons or hyperlinks that open new pages specific to the website or pages connected to other websites called web pages. A website can be described as a building with different floors and doors that lead to different groups of information. Each set of information is available in different web pages. For instance, when you visit a company's website like “www.ford.com”, you are able to view the company's products and services that exist within the website by clicking on various buttons or links that open up new pages of information relating to that link or button. Web browsing or surfing is used to describe this process whereby you enter a specific websites home page through its web address e.g. “www.ford.com” and then continue to explore the channels of information available to you in the website. Taking the example of www.ford.com, the website may have links to different models of motor vehicles categorized by vehicle type. This listing allows you to seek information on specific products that are available in their own web pages within the “www.ford.com” website. In an online store like “amazon.com” for instance, you can enter the website and click on different product categories like DVD's and open up pages of information specific to the product category of choice, i.e. pages that contain only information on different makes and models of DVD players.
Each page within a website is given its own URL address to describe where this information is stored within the main website. While “www.ford.com” may take you to the companies homepage, a web page address with a specific URL locator “www.ford.com/vehicles/explorer.html” will take you to a specific page located within the “www.ford.com” website specific to Ford Explorer vehicle range. If you knew this address and you intended to only visit Fords website to view information on the “Explorer” you could immediately type in the designated web page address or URL in your web browser and immediately access the specific information without first having to visit the homepage “www.ford.com” to navigate through the websites different pages till you have found the page you wanted to visit.
While websites do provide a valuable resource to access product and company information, the process of searching and locating the page containing the information of choice is sometimes a tedious and ineffective task. Also, visitors who have been to the same website before, generally know their areas of interest within the website, but still have to follow the navigating process to reach their destinations, e.g. to access yahoo's sports page for tennis, a person would have to visit “www.yahoo.com”, access the sports page then navigate to the tennis sports page and so on. One potential way to deal with this situation is to provide website visitors immediate access to the pages of their choice with a simple access process. Remembering the URL location of these pages could become difficult, so an alternative could be provided to make this process far more user friendly. An invention that allows web visitors to access a web page directly from either e-mail applications with the use of an e-mail address defining the location of a web page could provide a means to overcome these difficulties. E-mail addresses have the potential of defining individual locations of individual people, and are generally easier to remember. Also, it is a well-known fact that e-mail is used more often than the Internet with online users accessing their e-mail more frequently than they do the Internet.
Consumers have become more sophisticated about using the Internet. With Billions of dollars that marketers spend on advertising, consumers are more aware of the products and services they are interested in and are seeking ways of accessing this information more efficiently and effectively without having to search through web pages to find the information they want. If a consumer is interested in, for example, a specific mobile phone from Sony, it is obvious that this information would appear on the Sony website. Having a knowledge of this, could there not be a simple way of reaching this web page without having to navigate through the Sony website altogether, or in fact have the Sony website send this page to your e-mail instead?
The Internet has thus become an indispensable marketing tool for companies to reach their consumers. Today literally every product that is marketed and sold can be found on the Internet. Very few marketing and advertising campaigns exist today without mentioning their website address where more information can be found about the product being advertised. Also, the success of companies who market and sell products to consumers is dependent on understanding who their consumers are and what they think and react to products and the market. Unlike a conventional brick and mortar store, where consumers visit the store, allowing companies to see and understand who their consumers buying their products are, Internet websites will have millions of visitors viewing products in their web pages without giving any idea who these consumers are. Are they male or female? How old are they? This is because web browsers have no way of identifying individual web visitors.
Market research also provides an invaluable resource to understand consumers and their buying decisions. Predominantly, most market research conducted today is in physical contact with consumers fitting the profile of a client's business. Although these methods of research may be effective, they require great resources especially when a few thousand consumers are to be targeted for research. Also, these forms of research are expensive and involve lengthy processes that could take weeks to complete. Market research conducted online has made a dramatic difference to companies' research needs. Online surveys can reach visitors across various websites and can generate results within moments. Typical online research surveys include polling systems where consumers complete a “yes/no” question, to the more advanced research surveys that acts in a pop-up window that initiates as soon as you open a specific web page that has been programmed to display the survey. While consumers enjoy giving their opinion, web visitors find it sometimes annoying, because the research survey has no way of identifying who they are and whether or not they are, in a marketing sense, “qualified” to answer the research questions. Therefore, in certain instances, a visitor with intentions to offer some of their valuable time, discovers that after accessing an online survey, they are filling in information about credit card decisions in the US while they are actually from Australia.
The drawback to current online research is the inability to target specific research questionnaires to the exact demographic profiles of consumers you wish to target. To overcome some of these problems, researchers select websites that target consumers that best fit their research criteria. This however, is not entirely fool-proof and as a result online research remains a distant second choice to conventional research methodologies.
In the same way that website owners have no way of telling who the exact profiles of people are who are viewing their web pages, online researchers have no way of targeting research surveys to the exact consumers who would be “qualified” to answer their questions. Both website owners and researchers would benefit from a system that could overcome these difficulties.
On the other hand, consumers would also benefit from being able to access web page information without having to navigate through website pages to reach the pages they desire. A system that could alleviate these difficulties by providing consumer instant access to the web pages and information of choice without having to navigate through web pages could provide both consumers and website owners a valuable solution to increase the effectiveness and user friendliness of the Internet in general.
One method of informing potential clients about new products is by unsolicited e-mails, also known as spam. The negative effects of spam are that it is generally an irritation to consumers and/or that spam may be illegal.
It is the intension of current invention to provide a solution that will alleviate the above difficulties and provide for a way that will allow Internet users to instantly access web page information from their e-mail applications, as well as allow researchers and website owner the use of a system to identify the individual profiles and demographics of the consumers visiting their websites. The current invention further seeks to ameliorate the negative effects of spam.